The present invention relates to a seal breaking apparatus of a gas cylinder. This seal breaking apparatus is suitably used for a carbon dioxide fire extinguisher for household, office or vehicle using a cartridge type gas cylinder, and can compactly house a plurality of the gas cylinder in a cylindrical body, and improve to reduce in size and weight and an appearance. Further, the seal breaking apparatus can break a seal of the gas cylinders easily and safely in one time and use large quantity of gas quickly and safely. Furthermore, the seal breaking apparatus can prevent solidifying a dry ice and closing a passage after breaking the seal of the gas cylinders to thereby obtain a stable jetting state of a gas.
The carbon dioxide fire extinguisher has been widely used as a fire extinguisher of an electric facility and an oil fire since there are no contaminations after using it and it has stable quality for a long time of period.
Conventionally, as the carbon dioxide fire extinguisher, the following one has been used, that is, a fire extinguisher comprising a cylinder filled with high-pressure carbon dioxide, a jet head connected to the cylinder, and an approximately trumpet shaped horn for holding the carbon dioxide jetted from the jet head toward an origin of a fire.
The above-described fire extinguisher is used by jetting the carbon dioxide in the cylinder, solidifying it on an inner wall of the horn as a dry ice, scattering the dry ice with the carbon dioxide jetted as a gas, and jetting a mixture of the dry ice and the carbon dioxide toward the origin of a fire from an opening portion of the horn (for example, referring to Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 7 (1995)-51398).
However, as for the above-described carbon dioxide extinguisher, there are some problems. That is, a complicated operation is necessary when the fire is extinguished, that is, removing a safety plug, holding an operation handle while grasping a fixed lever, and directing the opening portion toward the origin of a fire while holding the horn. Such a complicated operation takes time and effort, and it cannot correspond to quickly extinguishing the fire. Further, it is hard to handle the fire extinguisher since it is large and heavy weight, and is difficult to keep an installation space since an occupying space is large. Furthermore, since a part of the carbon dioxide is used as a dry ice condition, a jet portion is closed by the solidification of the dry ice, so that a stable extinguishing action cannot be obtained.
Further, as the other pressure type fire extinguisher, the following one has been used, that is, a fire extinguisher comprising a container main body filled with a powder fire extinguishing chemical therein; a head portion mounted at an upper portion of the container main body; a pressure gas cylinder which is screwed into the head portion to be mounted in the container main body and carbon dioxide and nitrogen gas are filled therein; a handle; a perforating needle body for breaking the seal of a sealing plate of the pressure gas cylinder by interlocking with the handle operation; a fire extinguishing chemical discharge tube provided in the container main body; and a jet nozzle.
As for the above-described fire extinguisher, when the fire is extinguished, it is used by removing the safety plug, operating the handle to thereby lower the perforating needle, breaking the seal of the sealing plate of the pressure gas cylinder to thereby jet the carbon dioxide in the pressure gas cylinder into the container main body, successively pushing out the carbon dioxide by the nitrogen gas, guiding the powder fire extinguishing chemical to the fire extinguishing chemical discharge tube by the carbon dioxide, and jetting the chemical toward the origin of a fire from the jet nozzle (for example, referring to Japanese Patent Utility Model Laid Open No. 5 (1993)-88559).
However, as for the above-described powder fire extinguishing chemical fire extinguisher, there are some problems. That is, a complicated operation is necessary when the fire is extinguished, i.e., the operation comprising removing the safety plug, lowering the perforating needle body by operating the handle, seal-breaking the sealing plate of the pressure gas cylinder, and directing the jet nozzle toward the origin of a fire. This operation takes time and effort and cannot correspond to quickness of extinguishing the fire. Further, it is hard to handle the fire extinguisher since it is large and has heavy weight, and difficult to keep the installation space since the occupying space is large. Furthermore, since the pressure gas cylinder has a small capacity, the powder fire extinguishing chemical is jetted with the small capacity for a short time, so that there is a problem that the fully extinguishing action cannot be obtained.
In order to solve the above-described problems, the following apparatus for breaking a seal of a cylinder has been known (for example, referring to Japanese Patent Utility Model Laid Open No. 7 (1995)-12700, 62 (1987)-24199), that is, an apparatus comprising a plurality of a small cylinder screwed and mounted at a base; a cutter main body slidably provided at the base; a plurality of a cutter opposedly provided on one side of the cutter main body toward the sealing plate of the cylinder; a hollow case provided on another side of the cutter main body; and a piston comprising an electric ignition type squib is slidably housed in the hollow case. When breaking the seal of the cylinder, the squib is exploded ad moves the piston, the cutter is pierced to the sealing plate to break the seal, and then the gas in the small cylinders is taken out t to the outside.
However, the above-described seal breaking apparatus needs much power in order to break the seal of the sealing plates of the cylinders. Further, the mechanism is large-scale, precise and a high cost, since the apparatus uses the electric ignition type squib as a seal breaking means, and uses a means for exploding the gas sealed in the squib with an electric ignition system to thereby breaking the seal. Further, it is hard to obtain easiness, quickness and safeness of the operation. Furthermore, since a plurality of the cylinder is arranged in parallel, the apparatus is increased in size and it is hard to handle. Thus, it is hard to use the above-described seal breaking apparatus as the fire extinguisher or the small fire extinguisher for household.